The amount of payments made electronically in South Korea continued to rally in the first quarter of this year as a growing number of people are using mobile shopping and remittance services, central bank data showed Monday.

The daily average amount of electronic financial transactions came to a record 581.53 billion won ($521.6 million) in the January-March period, up 13.2 percent from a quarter earlier, according to the data from the Bank of Korea.

The quarterly figure has broken records over the past four years to mark the highest amount since the central bank started collecting data on electronic payments in 2008.

The daily average number of electronic deals edged up 0.2 percent on-quarter to a record 23.9 million over the cited period.

Meanwhile, the daily transactions of mobile payments or digital wallet services like Samsung Pay jumped 17.8 percent on-quarter to an average 4.15 million worth 176.7 billion won in the first quarter, the BOK data showed. (Yonhap)